I once scurried through a jungle of tomes
From the languid turf of hazy hagglers
To the esoteric sphere of cryptic connoisseurs
The jagged rhythm pulsating with a staccato of pebbles
Not a placid clime but a wonky wilderness
Where your eyes rove for honey of rising cadence
Only to decelerate
From an alien territory to a corny scenery
The voyage of discovery must continue...
As sojourners of change


Onuchi Mark © 2010

In this tightly interwoven
tapestry of
           silks and cottons
softness upon stems
an intricately-*****
                     journey
manifesto of life
        I find myself in
patchwork landscapes
of ochre and
rust turning
           turquoise
earthern shades
of cumin and cardamom
cloves and coriander
piquant red of paprika
alighting the senses
My fingers reach out
to sift the powder
to crush
fragrant fronds
of fresh basil and oregano
upon the blueprint of tips
allow their scent
to permeate my skin
and infuse tissue
                of tongue and lips
and I seem to be
in this
           bustling marketplace
my blood afire like
dried ghost pepper
searing and brightening
all flavors
fenugreek and asafoetida
to soothe the ache
of emptiness
chervil and chive
to get juices flowing
I want to slit open
vanilla pods
get at the beans
revel in their essence
wear it all over me


In this realm of spice
and paradise
I am flying,
a magic carpet of dreams
unrolling before me
like an unfurled flag
of new existence
The sounds of hagglers,
fading in raw visons
of shiny apple colors
olives piled high
textures of smooth cherry
budded broccoli
of walnut wrinkles
aroma of guava

Music takes over
I am in a cloud of
oud and lute
syncopated tabla
bells and rumbling
taut skin drum beats
Or is that long low whir
simply my heart purring
to the cadence of
       freedom's call?

I only know
that in the whisk
of a second's split
I will savor the flight
and also the
                fall

Flapping wings of triumph
Through rigid clouds and darkened galaxies
Where raging infernos stir the ***** of the ethereal
It is our desire to float with gusto across the ashes of pain
We have had enough of the searing talons of the vulture
We have had enough of the tumultuous quakes that gulped innocent victims
We have had enough of the political turmoil that claimed lives and maimed hearts
We have had enough of the economic crisis that clogged hoods and hauled hagglers
We have had enough…

and those who socialise
go among such few
as to be dubbed philosophers
for nonchalantly smoking
cigarettes in corners,
and there are those who shun
socialising as a pastime
equivalent of backgammon,
and smoke cigarettes entranced
by speaking back the nervous-twitch
embodiment of a sparrow's chirping,
smoking cigarettes as if they
were dragons.

the late 19th century was famous for its ménage à trois,
a profanity of a trinity, nietzsche rée and salomé
akin to edvard munch, stanislav przybyszewski
and dagny juell (ducha), and the evening by account of
jens thiis with stark naked satan unable to die
from pneumonia... we have much to congregate over,
less familiar stances to keep observance to,
and when the munch (moon khh, not
a marijuana smoker's pastime for a psychoactive
ingredient missing fuel or calorie),
exhibition came to london, i was expecting
the SCREAM... didn't get it...
fell in love with the madonna (1893),
such refined curvature, it was almost a
chair never sat on... pristine remembrance
of sloth never enjoyed for a book of letters
to be written by a politician...
shame, really... a homosexual's additive
enzyme of jealousy, who knows what chance
by-product  is worth keeping... l.s.d. or champagne?
well one produces psychotic people thinking
they're wheelbarrows, the latter produces anorexic models...
take a pick... take a sweetie darlin'.
that przybyszewski was an odd sort,
wrote solely in german, hallucinated,
was the stark naked satan at one seance of artists...
i'm guessing the next ****** will come
from a mono-****** marriage disdaining
the woman, the surrogate as merely *tool,
if not from there, then where from?
dysfunctional heterosexual marriages?
you can engrave an orphanage populace with the latter,
with the former you can't...
yo-yo was the craze when i re-entered english education
caterpillar of tiers...
you can't do with the former as you do with the latter...
they're too rich... godly power bestowed upon
mortals is only bestowed with a debased exchange of matter:
you guest it! money!
money is cheap as ****... it's basically an **** by-product
of a shovelled ***** squirter digging into it
with piston thrusts... money, an enzyme a catalyst
in reverse... poems are cheap as conscience...
while artistic doodles gain a multi-millionaire status
once the dabbler in oil is dead...
i sold van gogh's sunflowers for a country's g.d.p.
the over day... how's that?
the point of art is to be dead... that's when the hagglers
and merchants come... art of worth means the artist is dead,
dead;
so there we have it: men overtly invoke optics
into ******, they paint, watch a woman utilise
all vowels and one particular consonant into
an ******* contorting moan, hence they paint...
male poets are an oddity... they say:
painters go ahead, enjoy the sights...
i'll use words as wet thumbs and indexes
putting all the vibrant candles out from contorting
to a swallow's chirping twitch...
keep your paintings, sell them for a grand...
there are many more colours here...
than the primitive spectrum to a suited geometry
of contortion that only revels in still-life, the captured
moment: but indeed akin to the primary,
red and noun, indigo and pronoun, green and
adjective, yellow and verb, orange and adverb,
blue and proverb... while the other colours
missing are left to occupy the two canvases of
black & white, as writing, grammatical syllable
shrapnel of prepositions and what not.